Ethan Crumbley showed off ammunition in class day before mass shooting, lawsuit claims

Court filing also claims teenager placed bird’s head in a glass jar in men’s restrooms

The Michigan teenager charged with shooting dead four fellow students and injuring several others, showed off bullets in class the day before the massacre but the authorities failed to act, a lawsuit has alleged.

The updated suit claims Ethan Crumbley, 15, took the ammunition to Oxford High School, 40 miles north of Detroit, on November 29 2021, and showed it to his classmates.

A few hours later that day he would write on Twitter: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. See you tomorrow Oxford.”

According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, the fresh accusations were contained in an updated lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of some of the victims, alleges that students told staff about the ammunition, but they allegedly downplayed its significance.

The following day, the 15-year-old is alleged to have shot dead four fellow students and injured seven other people, one of them a teacher.

According to the same lawsuit, three weeks earlier, the teenager allegedly brought a bird’s head to school in a mason jar filled with yellow liquid and left it the the men’s restroom.

“The school was on alert about Ethan,” attorney Nora Hanna told the Free Press, claiming school officials could have prevented the bloodshed. “There are a million things that they could have done.”

“[The principal] excited Ethan Crumbley by pulling him out of class, warning him that Child Protective Services might be called, thereby encouraging Crumbley to accelerate his timetable for murder,” the lawsuit states, adding that removing the teenager from class in front of his classmates and making him sit for an hour for his parents, escalated his plan.

The teenager is charged as an adult with one count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder and 12 counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. A judge previously entered a plea of not guilty, at the request of the teenager’s lawyer during an arraignment in December.

School Shooting Michigan (AP)

This month, that lawyer, Paulette Michel Loftin, told Fox News, it was possible the teenager could plead guilty.

“I do think there’s a possibility [of a plea]. It is too early. We haven’t reviewed all of the discovery yet; there is still some forthcoming,” she said.

“I think it’s too early to jump to that phase, but that is a definite possibility.”

His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter over the shooting, where it is alleged they ignored numerous warning signs about their son and instead bought him a gun that was used to kill four students.

They have pleaded not guilty. They each face a maximum prison sentence of 60 years and maximum fines of $30,000 if convicted on all four counts.

Tim Mullins, a lawyer who represents the Oxford Community Schools district, did not immediately respond to enquiries from The Independent.

He has previously defended the district’s handling of the shooting and said it is fully cooperating with authorities.